Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Take A Back Road

I love
tourists. I can easily spot them walking
down the street in Leiden. The signs are all there: way too comfortable shoes (a.k.a. not boots or converse), the
over-the-shoulder purse (women do use these here, but it’s while they’re riding
their bikes), a nervous spring to their step, if you’re lucky, a fanny pack.
Yes, I’ve seen them, which begs the question – do they still sell fanny packs
or has that man been hoarding that fanny pack in his closet since 1987? I don’t know.
But I love them all because I see them trying to nonchalantly review the
map on the street corners while their children keep watch for the imaginary ruffians
around. I want to run over to them,
point them in the right direction, and really
make their day. They are the only people in this city less familiar
with all the inner-workings of everything than me. I did help a lost Canadian once. She walked up to me and asked if I spoke
English, I happily replied “I do!” with probably a little too much
enthusiasm. She was in the train station
parking lot, but she didn’t know it and was wondering where the train station
was. So, that was an easy question to
answer. See? I’m knowledgeable.

After incorporating
many of the lessons learned while traveling in Paris,
my family took a road trip to Bruges
for a long weekend in June. Driving in
the car was heavenly after the fiasco of the Thalys train to Paris. As the highway stretched before me with
fields aligning each side, I could almost
imagine us driving down I-35. To further
complete the road-trip experience, we stopped off at a Texaco to fill the tank
and grab lunch. We feasted on made-to-order
sandwiches of freshly baked bread, grilled chicken, and crisp vegetables. It was kind of like Subway, if only Subway
had a real bakery and a garden growing out back. The drive was only 2 ½ hours and as we approached
the town, the sun started to shine with a warmth we had not encountered this
year. Although the air was still crisp
outside, its rays warmed the car to the point we had to turn on the A/C. Happiness is the first time (not the 100th
time, like most of my friends in the U.S.
are doing right now) you turn on the A/C of your car after a long winter. We
pulled off the highway and started viewing close-encounters with dairy cows. I raised an eyebrow to my husband (the GPS
has led us down questionable paths before – including instructions such as
“board ferry”). But I decided to trust
it and sat back to enjoy the small country two-lane road it directed us
down.

We had rented a gardenhome in the center of Bruges. After passing by a small suburban-like
neighborhood complete with an Aldi grocery store, we discovered the hidden
jewel that is Bruges.

“When the headquarters of the Hanseatic
League moved from Bruges to Antwerp at
the end of the 15th century, many merchants followed, leaving abandoned houses,
deserted streets and empty canals. Bruges, a former hub of Europe,
slept for 400 years. The city slowly emerged from its slumber in the early
19th century as tourists passed through en route to the Waterloo battlefield
near Brussels.
In 1892 Belgian writer and poet Georges Rodenbach published Bruges-la-Morte (Bruges the Dead), a
novel that beguilingly described the town’s forlorn air and alerted the
well-heeled to its preserved charm. Curious, wealthy visitors brought
much-needed money into Bruges, and sealed
its fate as a town frozen in time.”

After centuries, Bruges
is still walled off from the world. After
curiously taking cues from the cars in front of us, we drove over the moat and through
a large fortress-like gate into the town.
We maneuvered the car down the tiny cobblestone streets and to our
surprise, were able to easily find parking on the street. The streets were seemingly abandoned as we
unloaded the car. My husband retrieved
the house-owner’s instructions from the front door of her house and our family inquisitively
walked around the block, found the walled garden in the back and unlocked door. Just like a secret garden, we were
transported back in time and after tromping through the overgrown grasses, we found
our tiny, but adequate garden home and entered.
The house was built in the 18th
century and the original stone fireplace still stood. It’s funny how the mind works. In a world of unfamiliar, my mind will often
stretch to grasp the familiar in ways it may not normally reach so far. As we played house in a Bruges
garden home built centuries ago, I felt a tug on my mind. The home reminded me of my grandmother’s home
in Lubbock and the connection took
a few days to pin-point: the floor was a rust-colored stone. The living room in my grandma’s house was a
rust-colored brick. Despite the fact
that she covered the brick with wall-to-wall carpeting when I was in elementary
school, the memory still lingered in long-forgotten file cabinet of my
mind. It just took an ancient house in Bruges
to dust it off and recall it.

All the guidebooks I
had read described the town as an ideal backdrop for a fairytale. Walking through the town the next day, I
would agree that Disney must have stolen the scenery for Rapunzel’s and Belle’s
trips through town from Bruges. But beyond the architecture, Bruges
reminded me of Disneyworld in many other ways. The primary modes of transportation were your
feet, carriage rides, and boat rides through tiny picturesque canals. As we meandered through the streets, it did
not feel as if any ‘real’ people lived there.
Even the lady who owned the house we stayed in seemed more like a ‘cast
member’ than a real resident. When she
wasn’t bringing us breakfast, she was giving tours through the city. Everywhere you looked people were glancing at
maps, speaking English, and taking photos.
If you don’t like tourists, this is not the place for you. Since we’ve been living here, I found it
extremely comforting. It was a quaint
little town, small enough to see everything by walking, like Savannah
in America. It has lots of history, some great sights, a
few manageable museums, and great food.
It wasn’t so overwhelming in that I didn’t feel guilty for taking a nap
with my daughter on Saturday, while my over-excited husband and son wandered
the town square and had a bottle. (V:
beer, Baby: milk, of course).

Belgium
is proud of their fries, beer, chocolate, and waffles which is a recipe for
some good old-fashioned family fun.
Something for everyone, right?! There are some nice restaurants and a brewery
in Bruges and I would suggest
checking out those sights if you are in town without children or at least with
children old enough successfully enjoy evening hours between 5:00 p.m. and bedtime. We were not, so we opted
for the, let’s-buy-a-variety-of-Belgian-beers-at-the-store-and
drink-them-in-our-garden-home-after-the-kids-are-asleep-option. It may sound boring, but it wasn’t. It was relaxing, which, I think, it what Bruges
is all about.

We took a canal ride
and giggled as baby ducks were playfully swimming/being run over by the current
created from the boat. We had Italian
and Egyptian take-out. We took video of
our daughter dancing in the Markt. We
shushed our children as we breathed in the peacefulness of the only remaining
almshouse community in the city. We ate
Belgian chocolates in the shape of letters in front of ancient churches with
the bells ringing. Our favorite stop
though, was the French Fry (Friets) museum.
Beyond zoos and aquariums, there are few museums which can catch the
interest of a two year old, but French Fries are on the list. We learned about the origin of the potato, the
development of it as staple crop during the famines of the 1770s, and how they
cook fries in Belgium. It’s a two-step process which involves beef
and horse fat (it was enough
information to spoil my appetite, I’d rather not know what fats they use to cook
the potatoes in The Netherlands – ignorance is bliss).

Late Monday
afternoon after a full day of sightseeing, we loaded the car and pressed the Go
Home button on the GPS. Happy and
satisfied with the weekend adventure (without too much adventure), we queued up the Big Spring Texas Road Trip
play-list I had created last fall. As we
passed though Belgian and Dutch towns and farms, both kids slept soundly, and I
turned to my husband and smiled. After
months of pretending to be a resident in The Netherlands, casting ourselves in
the role of Tourist from Texas,
is just an easier part to play.

About Me

Celeste is an American expat who has been living in Leiden, The Netherlands since January 2012. She made the leap from Texas with her husband, two small children, and two large dogs. She's an ex-accountant who has adapted to her new role as full-time-Mom (with a part-time job) in a new country. Eleanor Roosevelt's advice, "Do one thing every day that scares you," isn't necessarily optional in her daily life.